Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a document management system which is capable of a search based on document attributes referred to as an attribute search, a search designation method, and a computer-readable storage medium.
Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, as search methods for searching a document group managed by a document management system, there are two known methods referred to as a full-text search and an attribute search. A search target of the full-text search is mainly contents of a text in a document managed by the document management system. One or more character strings included in the text of the document are designated as search keywords when the search is performed. According to the full-text search, if one or more character strings designated as the search keywords are included in the text of the document, that document is retrieved. This means that one or more documents that match a search condition are retrieved according to the execution of the search.
The attribute search defines metadata in the document management system in advance, and searches a value corresponding to one or more pieces of metadata set for each document. The metadata is generally referred to as a property, an index, or an attribute. In the present invention, the metadata is referred to as an attribute and a value of the metadata is referred to as an attribute value.
The attributes to be set to a document may include, for example, a document name, a date and time of creation, a file size, a creator, and a comment. Further, an attribute value is set for each attribute. The attribute values are, for example, “company A estimate.doc”, “2009/12/10”, “2456”, “Momotaro Miyamoto”, and “important!”. There are two types of attribute values. One is a value which is automatically assigned by the document management system. The other is assigned by a user of the document management system. For example, the attribute such as the document name, the date and time of creation, the file size, or the creator is set when the document is stored in the document management system, whereas the attribute such as the comment is arbitrarily set by the user for the document stored in the document management system.
Regardless of which type the attribute is, the document management system provides a property screen. The property screen can be used to refer the attributes set to the document and to change settings of the document attributes, and enables the user to access the attributes via the property screen. Further, the document management system provides a search screen for the attribute search. The user can perform the search by designating one or more search conditional expressions on the search screen.
A parameter designated for the search conditional expression is a pair of an attribute name and an attribute value of the attribute. The attribute names are, for example, “document name”, “date and time of creation”, “file size”, “creator”, and “comment”. Additionally, matching conditions, such as partial match, perfect match, and prefix match, are generally used as parameters of the search. In many cases, a search conditional expression used in the attribute search includes three parameters, i.e., an attribute name, a matching condition, and an attribute value.
Further, when a plurality of search conditional expressions are designated for the search, in many cases, the user designates a logical operator by which the conditional expressions are connected into one search conditional expression on the search screen. The logical operators which are usually used are the AND operator and the OR operator. The AND operator is used for searching for a document that matches all the conditional expressions in the connected search conditional expression. The OR operator is used for searching for a document that matches any one of the conditional expressions in the connected search conditional expression. Regarding the attribute search, these parameters can be combined to form a search formula which is more sophisticated. By narrowing down the target document by the search conditions, the user can retrieve the target document more easily from a great number of documents.
In designating the search formula of the attribute search, the user selects one parameter of the attribute name of the search conditional expression from a list provided by the document management system displayed on the search screen. Then, the user enters an attribute value of the selected attribute as a free keyword. Thus, if the input character string of the attribute value is long, the possibility of input error is increased. If an input error occurs, an incorrect search formula will be unintentionally formed by the user. Thus, even if the search is executed, the target document may not be retrieved. Thus, there is a need for means that can help the user to input the character string of the attribute value of the search formula. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 03-051958 discusses such means.
According to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 03-051958, if a user performs a search after designating a character string displayed on a display unit, the search will be executed by using the designated character string as the search target. Thus, if a keyword to be searched is included in the character string displayed on the display unit, the user needs to do is to select the keyword by a mouse or the like to execute the search. Thus the user does not need to newly input the character string using an input device such as a keyboard.
However, if the technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 03-051958 is applied to the attribute search, although it is helpful in reducing the possibility of an error regarding the input of a character string of an attribute value, since the user needs to select the attribute name that corresponds to the attribute value, not all of the user's work is reduced.